Meal Prepping Made Simple

The irony of meal prepping is that it takes time on the front-end, to save time on the back-end. So in reality you don’t save time during meal prep you’re just redistributing time.

It’s still worth meal prepping though because meal prep is about saving time (eating food you have already prepared) where life is stressful and causes you to make bad decisions.

Another way of thinking about meal prepping can be as a train-of-thought.

Thinking about your options of food before you find yourself starving gives you a better chance of staying on track. Knowing that you will be passing a Chic-fil-A while running 2-hours of errands you have already decided to pick up those new grilled-chicken nuggets is the train of thought that I’m referring to. Versus what typically happens is you don’t think about food during your errands and you become “hangry” (hungry + angry). This typically leads to very unhealthy food choices that take us off track.

And you don’t have to geek-out about meal prepping. Cooking 20 meals-at-a time is NOT the way. Seeing images of people cook that many meals at-one time is a turn-off and is NOT practical.

There are many other ways to meal prep. For me, cooking extra food every night to have left-overs the following day is a form of meal prep. Buying extra groceries with the thought “what can I eat that is easy and keeps me on track” is a form of meal prep. I also believe that thinking about what fast-food chain I can eat at while running errands around town is a form of meal prep.

Meal Prep as I define it: is thinking about ways or habits that you can create to keep you as consistent as possible on your dieting regimen.

Other tricks I use include:

Boiling a dozen eggs every Sunday. I’ll eat them throughout the week when I’m hungry.

Make quick sandwiches for lunch (already saved on my “meals” on MFP)

Have a bag of salad and your favorite dressings in the fridge at all times

Bring a shaker bottle with whey protein with me everywhere I go just in case I go hungry

Eating something before I leave the house. “Never go to the grocery store hungry”.

This mentality of meal-prepping ensures you make the best decisions possible to meet the goals I am striving to achieve.
Hope that helps!